covenant and by the language of Psalm 8 (Heb 2:5–9).
40. In Hebrews it will not be possible to think of Christ’s faith as an “apocalyptic” work of God, as if not a human response; it is indubitably a response of a human, Abraham’s seed, albeit a distinctive human, the Son of God who is also called God and Lord.
41. In these texts, the “reward” is not “payment for labor” or “earned wages” but the freely-given, uncoerced return to suitable recipients; cf. Barclay, Gift, 197, 316, 485.
42. To be living in the Spirit as opposed to “flesh” is not to be made a passive body animated by an alien force, but to be alive in the only way creation can be truly alive. To be without the Spirit of God is to be dead, thus powerless. To have the Spirit is to be fully human, to be fully a creaturely agent, and thus wholly responsible and free for creaturely obedience. The word “independent” can be problematic, but something like it seems important in keeping with the general doctrine of creation as not-God. The corollary of God’s radical otherness is creation’s separate existence, not as without dependence but as possessing, by and within the divine endowment, by and within the power of the divine gift, the status of its own existence. Ingredient in this for humans (whatever is said of the rest of creation) is their distinct existence as whole persons, and thus fully volitional existence.
43. See Laansma, “Living and Active Word.”
44. This is seen clearly by Lindars, Theology of Hebrews, 98–102.
45. See the title and argument of Marshall, New Testament Theology.
46. The role of honor and shame as well as patron and client relations in the Greco-Roman world as these relate to the situation of the readers is amplified (helpfully, but to the point of overstatement) in the work of deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude and deSilva, Despising Shame.
47. Examples of the latter are easily drawn from the OT and the literature of other societies. For one vivid narration of Rome’s collapse, see Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire, 3–5.
The Letter to the Hebrews
1:1–4
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
Context
Hebrews was sent as a letter to a house church by a person who shared a history with this church and who hoped to visit it soon (see 13:18–25). Even so, it is a literary sermon and begins as such. The opening lines command the floor and bend the mind to the fact that God has spoken in and as the Son. When all is said, it is to this same emphasis of divine speech that the sermon will return at its end (12:25–29). If we have read ahead, we will know that there are waiting for us some bracing exhortations to listen to what God has said, the force of which have been felt fairly immediately by churches through the centuries. But there are also some densely woven theological statements and expositions whose meaning and relevance are less obvious. These opening verses, their formal and theological beauty notwithstanding, might fit in the latter category. They dazzle us but we do not yet see their implications for life. But then if we had gone straight to the “So what?” of the closing chapters we would have been asking, “How do we know that God has in fact spoken again, since the prophets have fallen silent and the glory forsook the temple? Who is this Son in whom God speaks? What is this ‘great salvation’? By what authority are these claims about the new covenant made? How do we know they are true and worthy of our very lives? How does this gospel square with the reality that our situations have not improved but in some ways worsened? If this is the God of Abraham who speaks, how can this speech be reconciled with what he said earlier? Is he a faithful God?” Without answering these questions all those great exhortations would be floating in thin air. The writer therefore begins by dwelling on the answers to these questions in ways that anticipate, reprise, and grow. These opening lines of poetic prose give us the Son in and as whom God has spoken. In these four verses there is both less than what will be developed in the rest of the sermon and more. Both in these verses and in what follows the preacher will be making use of a good deal of what the church already confesses, some of which he will only hint at or mention, some of which he will review more fully, and all of which forms the core of convictions from which every line of his exposition follows—for those with eyes and ears. The whole exposition to come is latent in what they have already confessed. It is a matter of calling their attention to this, for the sake of both understanding and obedience. As will eventually become clear to later readers such as ourselves, it is a marked degree of inattentiveness that has led to a weakened church. The beginnings of apostasy are already noticeable. As involved as the argument will become, every word of this sermon is in fact a loving, rhetorical struggle for the life of this church, beginning with this powerful statement of the fact that God has spoken in these last days in and as the Son who sits on the divine throne at the right hand of his Father. And this Son has cleansed his people of their sins. Beginning of the end of story.
A sketch of the Greek sentence structure of vv. 1–3 indicates how to understand its logic:
having spoken through the prophets
God spoke in the Son
whom he appointed
through whom he made
who
being the radiance
bearing all things
having cleansed
sat
Background
The audience was a church that had received the gospel second hand (2:3) but still stood within decades of the turn of the ages from first to new covenant. As such we can almost hear the question of John 9:29 lurking, including the deeper strains that John’s context gives it: “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The answer to this challenge will be load bearing for everything to come in our sermon. We must bear in mind that Hebrews is concerned exclusively with the Son who is Jesus, though the name Jesus will be withheld until 2:9. But, in common with the rest of the church, these believers already confessed Jesus as the Son, and so the writer cashes in that confession for maximum effect in this opening salvo of 1:1–4.
“For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.” (Wis 7:24–27 NRSV)
The gospel tradition—beginning from Jesus’ own life and teaching—had already developed ways of understanding and expressing (not inventing!) who it was that had come to them and then gone to take his place on the throne, accomplishing their salvation (10:5–18). One particularly potent and fitting mode of doing this was via the personified figure of divine
